StreamCast makes its case

P2P gives users a full access pass to court case

WASHINGTON — StreamCast — along with Grokster a defendant in an Internet piracy case bound for the Supreme Court — has cheekily made the very technology in dispute available to anyone who wants to find out about the case.

StreamCast and Grokster are built around peer-to-peer technology, which the entertainment industry claims is used almost exclusively for illegal trading of movies and songs online. However, arguing that P2P has plenty of legitimate uses, StreamCast has accessed briefs filed in the Supreme Court case via P2P, allowing users to read as many as they want.

“Certainly, if this is not an example of a ‘substantial non-infringing use’ of technology being applied for a very important objective — making the vast amount of information outside of copyright and in the public domain available to anyone with access to a computer anywhere in the world at any time without choking the Internet — then I don’t know what is,” StreamCast topper Michael Weiss said in a statement.